"If you have symptoms, presume it’s Covid."
Professor Philip Nolan has compared leaving home with Covid-19 symptoms to drink driving.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne on Thursday, Nolan said that leaving your house with symptoms of the virus should become "socially unacceptable" in "the same way" as driving drunk.
The head the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET)’s modelling advisory group said: "Leaving your home with Covid-like or flu-like symptoms has to become socially unacceptable in the same way that drink driving has become socially unacceptable.
"It is dangerous now for people to mix if one of them has any kind of symptoms and we really need to err on the side of caution here and we’re better off staying at home if you have anything that suggests you have this disease.
"You could infect that unvaccinated person, the one-in-ten, potentially, in your workplace even though you’re vaccinated, if you feel sick with this."
He added that people with Covid-19 symptoms should presume they have the virus or another respiratory virus.
"You do not want to transmit Covid or any virus right now in society," he said.
"There’s a real concern that those measures, and in particular the measure of isolating if you have symptoms, may be slipping and that has pushed us to the wrong side of the knife-edge."
Nolan said that things are going in the "wrong direction" as case numbers continue to grow.
"To be honest, we are worried, given the positivity rates, that we’re seeing genuine growth once again," he said.
"Cases are growing at 2% per day and hospitalisations are growing at 2.4% per day."
It comes as
Dr Ronan Glynn confirmed that "two out of every three people in intensive care" are unvaccinated against Covid-19.
He said almost 30,000 adults haven't come forward for vaccination, while an additional 70,000 have only had one dose.
Main Image: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie.
